by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, July 12th, 2008
Failed Messiah and Gawker report on the latest (what? Not over yet?) scandal in the kashrut world. After the last round of scandals, Agriprocessors hired a PR firm - because as we all know, Public Relations is far preferable to tshuvah when a corporation sins- to restore its image. The firm, 5WPR, who has also represented the charming so-called “pro-Israel” pastor, John Hagee, (who hates homosexuals and Muslims and has had to apologize for sliming Catholics, oh, yeah and also blamed Jews for the death of Jesus, called liberal Jews “poisoned” and “spiritually blind,” and been relatively unconcerned that he hopes for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran even though he believes it will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel) apparently has engaged in some antics of its own.
It seems that 5WPR has left multiple comments on several blogs, including JTA and Failed Messiah’s, under a variety of aliases, and also posing as Rabbi Morris Allen of the Hekhsher Tzedek, as well as JVNA officer John Diamond and another frequent FailedMessiah commenter (all, as FM points out, federal crimes). The comments were designed to support Agri, bolster one another and discredit Hekhsher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement and Rabbi Allen. Failed Messiah posts screen shots of the comments - well worth looking at, if only for their utter ridiculousness.
More »
by Aryeh Cohen · Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
The right wing of American Orthodox Judaism, those who align themselves with various factions of chareidi and Yeshivah Judaism, are committed to what might only be called “triumphalist Zionism” (my locution, as far as I can tell). Triumphalist Zionists skip the whole cultural and political transformation piece of Zionism and go straight to “now we have an army and its our turn to kick gentile butt.” Most of these groups are extreme hawks on Israeli (and, often, therefore, American) foreign policy. Lubavitch, for example, were exceedingly anti-Zionist through the second world war (as Avi Rivitzky demonstrates in his important book Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism). They are also very active in opposing any territorial compromises or peace negotiations.
This process of triumphalist Zionism in the States was followed by the same trend in Israel. Whereas there was some talk that Rav Ovadyah Yosef, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi, (who does not see the settlement movement with the same messianic urgency as does Gush Emunim) would direct his political party Shas to support peace overtures, this did not in fact happen. The same holds true for Rav Shach, the dean of Roshei Yeshivah (Yeshivah heads) in Israel, and his Degel HaTorah party. Shas’ supporters were far more right wing than their leader and Rav Yosef ultimately let the party follow the more hawkish line. Rav Shach (an early mentor of Rav Ovadyah) too, expressed himself in opposition to the settlements, however his hatred of secular Jews and especially kibbutzim won out, with his Degel HaTorah party not supporting the peace overtures of the Labor Party.
It was only a matter of time before the patina of ambiguity toward co-existence cracked and the ramifications of triumphalist Zionism became obvious to all. On the one hand, this ideology afforded the chareidi parties internal justification to join the government as ministers (and ensure funding for their families and institutions), and to be in the heart of policy-making for all citizens of Israel (a seeming compromise with the Zionist project); the flip side of this was that this position of power gave the chareidi parties much political capital. Moreover, the chareidi parties could use foreign/security policy (settlements, wars) as leverage to score more funding for families and institutions (with the tacit and explicit backing of the American Jewish right).
This devil’s bargain has just now blown up again in the face of those Israelis who still see Israel as a Zionist project. This week in the Knesset a bill which exempted certain Yeshivot from the core curriculum that is mandatory for all elementary schools in Israel, passed the first reading. The Israeli High Court ruled three years ago that schools which do not teach the core curriculum can be denied government funding. The core curriculum mandates the teaching of basic civics and democratic values, Hebrew language and literature, English and Arabic, (though this latter is being contested mainly by the chareidim), along with sciences and mathematics, etc. This bill would grant exemptions to certain chareidi institutions (the so-called yeshivot ketanot), which would allow them to be funded by the government without having to teach the core curriculum.
The chareidi community in this latest move, has used its political leverage to undermine any sense of homogeniety or even unity of identity in Israel. This might not be a bad thing: liberal democracies are based on the notion that ethnic and/or religious minorities need not conform to the ideologies of the majority. However, and here is the chiddush, the chareidi parties are using their power from within the supposedly Zionist political institutions (not only Knesset seats, but government ministries) in order to undermine Zionism’s claim to forging a new kind Jewish identity. As Prof. Ruth Gavison wrote yesterday in Ha’aretz:
“It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this law to the image of the State and the manner in which it educates its young citizens. The law perpetuates a situation in which particular groups receive significant public financing even though the curriuclae of their institutions do not impart to their students the skills necessary to become part of the life of the State and fulfill their part in the activities needed for the survival of the State. The law gives a hechsher [kosher certification] to the ideologies which are the basis of the “their Torah is their craft” arrangement.” (my translation)
This move follows fast on the heels of the Israeli Rabbinate’s declaration that only chareidi conversions are okay, and that converts practicing modern Orthodox Judaism can have their conversions reversed (as Gershom Gorenberg has been assiduously documenting). In the States, Shaul Magid has argued, modern Orthodox high school graduates go to Yeshivah in Israel for a year and then come back alienated from the modern-Orthodox values of their parents.
It would seem then that the vaunted Zionist “return to history” is actually history repeating itself, playing out once again the fight over modernity of eighteenth and nineteenth century Eastern Europe and Germany. The new variable is, of course, political power. The chareidim now have the ability to enforce their own brand of Wahabism. It would also seem that only on Birthright (or the mainstream American Jewish community more generally) is Israel seen as paradigm which provides an answer to question of Jewish identity.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Seems there’s no level too low to which certain groups can sink. Ynet reports that certain rabbis Hadana and Tsadok are scamming Ethiopian couples by finding their conversions problematic, at the last minute so that they can’t get married, offering to do a “fake” wedding for them since they can’t cancel at the last minute… of course, not forgetting to charge them an arm and a leg for the favor… and then after the “fake” wedding and the “proper” conversion are over, Hadana will then do a “real” wedding for them in his office… for another fee, of course.
A Yedioth Ahronoth reporter approached Rabbi Shalom Tsadok with a “similar case,” in a bid to verify the couples’ complaints.
“Rabbi Shilo is introduced when it’s necessary and conducts the wedding; he is popular but must be paid what he asks for,” Rabbi Shalom Tsadok told him, adding he was “not involved with setting the price.”
When asked by the reporter whether he could ask Rabbi Hadana about Rabbi Shilo, or tell him that the wedding was not a real one, Rabbi Tsadok said: “You can, but no one should know it was make-believe… Rabbi Hadana probably knows everything…it’s for your own good.”
The Rabbinate, added Rabbi Tsadok, will not recognize the marriage. “It’s not binding. It’s just a little ceremony.”
The reporter than asked the rabbi whether NIS 3,000 ($900) would be enough. “He will only want cash,” said Rabbi Tsadok. “When you get to the wedding hall, you meet him before you go in, give it to him personally and then enter the hall with him.”
The wedding, explained the rabbi, is invalid: “It doesn’t count, just a make-believe… It’s artistry. There will be a wedding and everything, a ring too.”
Unsurprisingly, the couples mentioned in the article decided not to continue the conversion process, and did not get legally married. SO: in sum: chillul hashem, in making these people - who opted to go jump through every hareidi hoop so that they could be married, had someone deliberately screw them over for money (I wonder whether in fact there really was a problem with their conversion, given that halachically, it doesn’t actually take much to convert someone and have it stick) offer to fix it for more money, and then try to get - what, yes more money out of them… and they don’t want to consider continuing their journey towards joining the Jewish people? Astonishing.
FOlks, just go to the Masorti movement, already. They’ll do a proper conversion, they’ll marry you, and they won’t try to con you because you’re brown.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
ynet reports on the new Masorti campaign to get Israelis to marry according to halakha.. but not according to the Orthodox.
Israeli couples are increasingly uninterested in getting married according to the established Israeli system, with Orthodoxy monopolizing all legal lifecycle events, and going through a demeaning and complicated process in order to get married. Twenty percent -or more- of Israelis each year choose to live together as couples outside the framework of the Office of the Chief Rabbinate, either by not participating in any wedding ceremony or by going through a civil ceremony in Cyprus or elsewhere.
The Masorti campaign aims to bring Jewish couples in Israel back to tradition by showing them that it is possible to have a halakhic wedding which is not only according to Jewish law, but also includes personal touches, and can be more egalitarian… and doesn’t need to include demeaning lectures to the couple about their personal lives.
The campaign includes print ads and commercials on radio and Internet sites that direct readers and listeners to a well-put-together website, and has generated significant interest. In the first three days there were more than 25,000 unique hits on the website.
Of course, this has po’d the Establishment:
According to the Masorti press release
The Chairman of Shas in the Knesset, Yaakov Margi, petitioned the Israel Broadcasting Authority to ban the Masorti campaign from the airwaves. In a letter to Mordechai Sklar, IBA’s general director, MK Yaakov Margi charged that the Masorti movement “knowingly misleads and perpetrates a campaign of fraud.†He further claimed to be writing on behalf of “those who are spiritually lost and would not want to find themselves ending up in unseemly places.â€
MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) responded in his own letter to the IBA that Masorti “faithfully combines tradition and progress†and suggested the Shas letter should be buried as “a foolish attempt at censorship.â€
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
Haaretz and the NYT report on a local controversy regarding resistance to Westhampton beach Orthodox Jews wanting to put up an eruv.
You would think that wanting to tie some string to a few telephone poles would pretty much be ignored by the rest of the world, but it turns out that putting up an eruv has become a rather problematic venture over the past few years. A number of towns have begun to organize resistance to putting up an eruv.
The strangest part is that the resistance comes from both non-Jews living in the area… and non-Orthodox Jews, including, sometimes, Conservative Jews. It’s not as simple as anti-semiitism. Partly this stems from regions in New York where a few towns have gone from having few to having many Orthodox Jews, and in the process of becoming popular, sometimes the Orthodox community has made itself unpleasant by forcing some non-Jewish businesses out of business. Some of it is ignorance of what an eruv is by the non-Jews. But… you can’t say none of it is anti-semitism. For every five towns area where the Orthodox community has come in and refused to patronize non-shomer Shabbat businesses, are plenty of perfectly nice, normal Orthodox people who are just going about their business.
Ultimately the issue has become that people are protesting having a substantial Orthodox community in their area. The weirdest part for me is having liberal Jews mixed up in this. Okay, I can understand Reform Jews protesting eruvs in their neighborhood: some Reform Jews will stand on principal against any halacha if they are touched by it. (I’ve certainly had to occasionally work in situations where a Reform and Conservative shul will put on a joint program which, for logistical reasons, has to be in a Reform shul. And they will, as a matter of principal, refuse to provide kosher food. (BTW claiming that this is the majority of Reform shuls is as silly as claiming that all Orthodox communities are going to go around closing businesses that aren’t Orthodox owned) It isn’t the usual thing, but at least it isn’t peculiar.) In the case of any Conservative Jews involved in this, it’s downright peculiar, since Conservative Jews need eruvs as much as the Orthodox do: the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat has not been lifted, my Conservative chevre.
But the real story here is that the Orthodox are not always crazy when they start yelling about being picked on. In this case, it’s perfectly true, and in fact, the refusal of townships to put up eruvs because they don’t want the Orthodox to move in is not simple anti-semitism, but is also a form of internalized anti-semitism (I generally detest the use of that term, but it is, very occasionally, warranted). Friends, we need to start getting along better within the Jewish community. Granted, this is not all on one side. The Orthodox need to start working harder to not antagonize liberal Jews over their practices… and ought to be speaking up about Israeli refusal to separate synagogue and state. They could also work to make themselves better neighbors in a more public way. But in most places Orthodox Jews make fine neighbors, and finding ways to keep them out is just wrong, and bad for Am Yisrael, even if the Orthodox can’t meet the non-Orthodox halfway.
by LastTrumpet · Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
From Salon:
It’s got the power struggles, intrigue, love triangles and plot twists of any soap opera. But in the world’s first Hasidic “telenovella” — as soaps are known in Israel — there are no steamy love scenes and dialogue is peppered with “praise the Lord.”
The first half-hour episode of “The Rebbe’s Court” aired Thursday on Azure, a new Israeli cable channel focusing on Jewish issues. The show is set in a community of Hasidic Jews in Tel Aviv and portrays a world normally closed to outsiders.
Uri Orbach, the channel’s program director, said the show’s goal is to entertain, but narrowing Israel’s religious-secular divide is a welcome byproduct. “You see the ultra-Orthodox as real people,” he said.
Many Israelis believe the culture clash between Orthodox and secular Jews is one of the nation’s most pressing problems. Each side feels its way of life is threatened by the other, and decades of animosity have left the two groups with little common language.
Also, the pluses of a shomer-negia soap:
Actress Ranana Raz, who plays Zippora, said the soap’s steamy story lines are difficult to portray in the Hasidic setting, where men and women refrain even from casual touching. “It is challenging to show desire when you can’t do things in the normal manner. The eyes talk a lot,” she told Israel TV.
Menaster said the limitations make “The Rebbe’s Court” more exciting than a run-of-the-mill soap.
I’m going to reserve judgment until I find a way to see it. If anybody finds it online, let me know.
Full story. tip to avakesh
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 5th, 2008
Week Three, Day two:
Gevurah of Tiferet
According to ynet, a Petach Tikvah rabbinical court, after hiring a woman as secretary, sent her away in tears after humiliating her and threatening to curse her (seriously!) because … well, because she was female.
Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann heard about it and decided to intervene, ordering,
that the worker should be returned to work on Monday, and instructed the director-general of the rabbinical courts, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, to escort the woman during her first day at work in order to make sure she was being greeted appropriately.
Friedmann also sent a harsh letter to the Petah Tikva court’s presiding judge, Rabbi Baruch Shimon Salomon, stressing that the rabbinical court was obligated to follow the laws of the State of Israel, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Law that prohibits discrimination based on gender.
The minister warned that should the court fail to accept the worker, sanctions would be taken against it.
What I want to know is how they hired her without figuring to that she was a woman? Or did they hire her and then decided that women were sin-bearing D6 monsters? What?
Well, but OTOH, the rest of the Hareidi world is working on other important measures. Like banning snacks with pictures of the Israeli flag on them. And boycotting Independence day celebrations because they might lead to mixed dancing. Who wrote this punchline?
Finally, more on the Drukman case: “National Religious Party Chairman MK Zevulun Orlev announced Sunday he plans to propose a bill calling for stripping the rabbinical courts of all authority pertaining to conversions.”
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 5th, 2008
Haaretz offers an interesting response by Asher Maoz to the ridiculous attempt by the High Rabbinical Court to invalidate, retroactively, all of the conversions performed by (Orthodox) Rabbi Chaim Druckman, posted here by Josh Frankel a few days ago.
Will this finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Well, I doubt it. Although as Maoz -correctly- points out, such retroactive annulments are contrary to halakha, this is by no means the first ruling contrary to (or at the very least, irrelevant to) halakha made by those leading the charge to make (Ultra-) Orthodox Judaism more stringent, more separate, and more isolated. As a matter of fact, aside from a number of “halakhic” rulings which are simply stringent for their own sake, or the retroactive post-mortem re-ruling of those gedolei hador who ruled more leniently to make their actual rulings seem like they weren’t practices that the gedolim themselves actually followed or to at least try to hide the fact that they made such rulings at all, or out and out questionable practices (many of these have been covered in the Jewschool archives, but I won’t list them here) in general this tendency is in itself problematic as a matter of “al tifrosh” -do not separate yourselves - which is, in fact, the entire point, not simply a side effect, of many of the rulings of these types.
Just for one example of many, several of the halakhic solutions established by the Conservative/ Masorti movement in order to free agunot had actually been under consideration -or being used- by the Orthodox mainstream - until the Conservativim started using them, which them made them treif by association, with the current preferred mode to be to say that all weddings not performed by an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi are not valid, completely in contradiction to Jewish law, and running a real and actual risk of make mamzerut more common, because people are then “free” to remarry when in fact their first marriages are halakhically legitimate (all it takes are a Jewish man, an unmarried Jewish woman and two Jewish witnesses, rabbi not required), making their remarriages halakhically invalid. Oy, what a mess. The only humor to be had being that if it became common for women to get unchained by going to the Ultra-Orthodox and having their first marriage declared void, Masorti rabbis would almost certainly have to start insisting that anyone who had been remarried by the ultra-orthodox get a get retroactively… the entanglements could be legion…okay, not really that funny.
So what’s going to change now? Well, almost certainly nothing. At least not until the Orthodox who aren’t complete loons (most of them, but unfortunately, not speaking up) start saying that it’s not okay to trash moderation, that halakhah isn’t a means to make yourself politically powerful or to control your community’s every move, to oppress certain segments of your population, or to drive your neighbors nuts; when the normal majority start telling their leaders that they won’t follow them when they make stringencies for stringency’s sake, well, then, maybe then something will change.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
Day 14, week two, day seven
Malchut of Gevurah
Good news or bad? Hard to say. Methodists overwhelmingly defeated measures calling for divestment from companies that allegedly enable Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Divestment doesn’t strike me in this case as the most precise tool, especially given the supersessionist theology background grumbling that goes along with this movement, apparently. But OTOH, we don’t seem to hold the evangelicals to such a measurement when they say they will “support” Israel in any action they take.
SO when we have allies who disagree with Israel’s policies, what can they do to show it without being labelled as haters?
Well, There’s always J-street, now!
Day 13, week two, day six
Yesod of Gevurah
Ynet reports on the lastest mishegas:
Rabbi Shlomi Aviner has ruled that God disapproves of pants on women even when women are alone(!) Apparently the fact that God is not male and does not lust after women has been lost sight of somewhere. You should not even sleep in pajama pants since sleeping is a grand opportunity to show off your filthy, sinful bodies, ladies. Cover them up!!!
Aviner, Beit El’s rabbi and one of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders, was asked in a cellular Q&A session published in the “Small World” bulletin, “When a girl goes to relieve herself at night, is she allowed to say the ‘Asher Yatzar’ (’he who formed’) prayer while wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers?”
The rabbi replied that it is permitted to say the prayer in such a case, but added that “in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.”
However, Tsomet seems to have gotten the point that was made a few months ago when it came out that Hareidi women had begun taking upon themselves the modesty wrappings as seriously as Rabbi Aviner does and wrapping themselves in Burqas and more.
Rabbi Israel Rosen, head of the Tsomet Institute, has claimed an article published in synagogues over the weekend that “too much modesty leads women to the opposite direction, from abstinence to immorality.”
Rabbi Rosen also slammed the haredi norm to omit names of women from newspapers and from invitations, comparing it to the veil phenomenon in Muslim countries.
“For so-called modesty reasons, the woman is only presented as ‘his wife’, nameless, veiled, and my heart twitches,” he wrote in a weekly column published in synagogues over the weekend. “Is there no psychological connection between the hypocrisy of concealing the name and hiding the face under the ‘Taliban-style’ veil?”
You don’t think?
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Week Two, Day five
Hod of Gevurah
In February, a group of religious gay and lesbian Jews calling themselves HOD ( äåîåà éà ãúééà ), set up a website. According to ynet, the group wanted to set up the website to reach out to their community and show that they exist and that they do not wish to flout halakha.
Yneted reported:
Recognition and acceptance are therefore foremost on the site operators’ agenda, “We want to embrace both identities, gay and religious,†explained Itay, noting that “we (religious gays) can be found everywhere in the religious world, and simply want to eliminate the stigma, disgrace and sometimes outright violence that has been leveled against us within the religious community.â€
“We are your beloved sons,†site operators made an impassioned plea to the religious community, its rabbis and public leaders, also quoting Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook who stated that he would “rather transgress with reckless love to fellow Jews than unwarranted hatred.â€
Just about a week later, because of the huge response to the new site, the organizers of the site
sent out a letter to Orthodox community leaders in which the leader of HOD asked their community to recognize them as “a living, viable part of its rank and file.â€
Again:
The letter was sent to rabbis, religious Knesset members, mayors, community leaders, and organization heads, including Conversion Authority head Rabbi Haim Druckman and Rabbi Yuval Sherlo, and notes that it is only ignorance and lack of awareness that lead to the senseless hatred against homosexuals within the Orthodox community.
Now, the faces behind HOD have met: Last week, 70 people met for the first face to face meeting of HOD. It was attended by representatives from all over (including non-hareidi movement groups, such as Chavruta – the religious section of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance).
The purpose of the meeting was to “receiv[e] legitimization to operate on the religious homosexuals’ behalf and lead the campaign aimed at gaining the religious leaders’ support” and to review a final version of the letter originally sent out in February. It had been amended according to recommendations of various rabbis, professionals and group members. Now they will ask for signatories in the religious community.
by shamirpower · Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Just a few hours ago, two gunmen opened fire at a Jerusalem yeshiva library:
At least seven students were killed and nine others were wounded Thursday evening when terrorists infiltrated the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem, police said.
Three of the injured were listed as being in serious condition and taken to Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Karem, while the other six were lightly hurt and taken to Sha’arei Tzedek Medical Center. MDA declared the incident a “multiple casualty event.â€
At least one terrorist infiltrated the yeshiva, possibly armed with an explosive belt, and began firing in every direction.
…
In Gaza, Hamas welcomed the terrorist attack. “We bless the [Jerusalem] operation. It will not be the last,†Hamas said in a statement.
In Gaza City, residents went out into the streets and fired rifles in celebration in the air after hearing news of the attack on the yeshiva.
It is notable that Al Jazeera and Commentary report: “Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, condemned the attack in Jerusalem.”
One source claims this to be a yeshiva that encourages illegal West Bank Settlements, citing this as a reason for its being targeted by Palestinian militants.
May their memory be a blessing.
Best wishes for a full recovery to all of those injured.
by Mordy · Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
biz posted last week about the Big Event, but to recap briefly; a group of Charedi Rabbis signed a ban for a concert featuring the vocal ‘talents’ of singers like Sheya Mendlowitz, Shloime Gertner, and Lipa Schmeltzer. Well, today, the NY Times finally picked up the story. Suffice it to say; It doesn’t look particularly good. The last graph of the story says:
Assemblyman Hikind said he planned to meet with the rabbis involved. “Suddenly, when it comes to faith in the rabbis, there is this big question mark,†he said. “And when you don’t explain to the young people, you lose them, plain and simple.â€
I couldn’t help but think of Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music. He writes:
Since it is a threat of death, noise is a concern of power; when power founds its legitimacy on the fear it inspires, on its capacity to create social order, on its univocal monopoly of violence, it monopolizes noise. Thus in most cultures, the theme of noise, its audition and endowment with form, lies at the origin of the religious idea.
But by rejecting that concern - by rejecting the use of noise, the authority is abdicating its own power. They should be embracing people like Schmeltzer and Gertner (because at least they aren’t Nirvana and Guns & Roses). But by delegitimizing even those Chassidic artists, the authorities are equivocating them with Kurt Cobain and Axel Rose. Why listen to Schmeltzer instead of Metallica if they are both banned? The distinctions disappear, as does the Rabbi’s monopoly on people’s listening. As someone who spent time in Charedi Yeshivas, I can attest to the fact that when you ban Soul Farm, they become just as contraband as the Sex Pistols. And you can’t keep people from trying to listen to music (unless you are the Taliban and have an actual physical authority over them).
Before I let this go on for too long, I just wanted to say how struck I was by another NY Times article this week that discussed the relationship between Orthodox Rabbis in Israel and the same in the USA:
A marriage registrar given a letter from an Orthodox rabbi abroad certifying that a person is Jewish is now expected to check with the office of Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, which maintains a list of diaspora clergy whose letters are to be trusted. The list is not publicly available. If the rabbi who wrote the letter is not on the list, the applicant is asked for other proof or referred to the rabbinic courts… “The rabbinate in Israel has put the Orthodox rabbinate” — meaning Orthodox rabbis in the United States — “on the same level as Reform rabbis,” Angel said.
So there’s obviously some tension as well, as the United States Charedi Rabbinate attempt to compete and prove themselves to their Israel counterparts. This is going to get worse before it gets better, though, if Attali is right, banning music might completely backfire.
by Danya · Friday, February 15th, 2008
I was recently sent a link to a blog post about a Monopoly-style board game purchased in Hasidic Brooklyn called “Handel Ehrlekh” (”dealing ethically,” and/or “wheeling and dealing”).
Included in the game are a variety of “soul searching” cards, both good and bad. Some of the bad ones are pretty amazing:
“Yiddeshe Tokhter! Du host aroys gelakht ven mener hoben gehert! Zeyer a groyse pritzus! Shtel dokh in ‘mikhutz lamakhane’ un blayb aroys 3 gang.” (Jewish daughter! You laughed when men could hear you. Very immodest! You’re excommunicated! Lose three turns.)
“Geredt English tzuvishin zikh! Yiddish redn taylt up fun di goyim! Shtel dokh in ‘mikhutz lamakhane’ un blayb aroys 3 gang.” (You spoke English amongst yourselves. Speaking Yiddish separates us from the Gentiles! You’re excommunicated! Lose three turns.)
“Geleynt a treyfene bikhl! Tomey, Tomey! Arayn in Gehenom un blayb aroys 2 gang.”Ungevoren di 2 tayereste pletzer vos du host.” (You read an unkosher book. Unclean, unclean! Got to Hell and lose two turns. Lose your two most valuable properties!)
“Geholfen di Tziyonistishe medinah! Fun a shaykhes tzu reshoim kumt keyn guts nisht aroys! Nor shoden! Tu teshuvah! Zitz in a yeshivah 2 geng, un tzol far di yeshiva vifel es kost far yededn aroys gebliben gan $50 far tzedokoh!” (You helped the Zionist country! No good can come out of an association with evil people, only bad! Repent! Sit in a yeshivah for two turns, and pay $50 tuition per day to charity).
The board has some important locations on it, including More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
All over the blogosphere , just in case you’ve missed it: the Forward Failed Messiah, the London Jewish Chronicle (and others), are talking about the new Jewish burqa (actually it’s hijab, but let’s not be overly technical).
Apparently, a small contingent of ultra-Orthodox women Ramat Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, started this, and it has now spread to other communities.
I have to say, I’d label this post as humor, except - it’s just not funny. It ’s sick, and unsurprising, and perfectly in line with the general increasing of controls on women, and the associated ideas that women are a contaminating force. It is in fact, the logical outcome of years of shameful perversion of halakha .
Miriam Shaviv of the Chronicle states pretty clearly - and persuasively- why she thinks this has happened:
And yet, the “frumka†is the logical extension of two clear trends in the frum world.
Firstly, standards of modesty are becoming increasingly stringent and require increasing effort to follow. A CD recording by a top rabbi from Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, reportedly asks women not to swing their arms while they walk and not to allow their daughters to wear colourful banana-clips in their hair. Women know that if they wear skin-coloured stockings, they must include a seam so it is clear they are not bare-legged. Schoolgirls do not wear shiny shoes that could “reflect their underwearâ€.
Paradoxically, the Orthodox world’s attempt to create a generation in which physicality is minimized has resulted in a generation obsessed with looks, clothes and sex.
Secondly, tznius, or modesty, has long moved from being about modest clothing to being about keeping women, and images of women, away from men.
Open a Charedi newspaper, and there are either no images of women, or they are blacked out. In the past few years, several women have been beaten up in Jerusalem because they would not move to the back of the bus in Charedi neighbourhoods; a top rabbi in Bnai Brak asked women to leave before the end of shul so they did not mingle with men following davening; that same town has a street with separate sides for men and women; separate shopping hours are not unknown.
Just last week, a sheitel shop in New York was boycotted for refusing to remove headshots of women wearing wigs from its window.
I also recommend reading the comments over at Failed Messiah, which are quite interesting.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
Earlier this week, we posted a little American trouble for the Lubavitch (or perhaps it’s the end of the trouble, hard to know how to frame it).
Now, there’s more. Apparently this is their fifteen minutes. Or something.
First, England’s Jewish Chronicle notes that England’s Lubavitch movement is in some serious economic trouble: apparently because of pouring an enormous amount of money into a new club for young Jews that they opened this year. Apparently nearly all the donations they received this year went into said club, “including ‘almost all’ of this year’s £750,000 yield,” leaving them £1.5 million (that’s 2,959,951 dollars American) in debt - and of course, they’ve had to close the club, in addition to leaving their teachers unpaid since April (although donors have now stepped in to pay the teachers’ wages).
In Israel, though, they’ve got different problems. Or, perhaps it’s the same problems that they’ve got here. Apparently it’s just gotten out that there may be problems with the beliefs of some Lubavitchers regarding their former (or not) rebbe. The Jerusalem Post reports that a former FSU immigrant who was not Jewish , but was eligible under the law of return, had become interested in converting and studied in a meshichist Jerusalem ChABAD yeshiva.
About two weeks ago, he appeared before a beit din (rabbinic court) for his conversion. He had nearly finished, when one of the rabbis asked him if he believed that the rebbe was the messiah. He answered yes, that that was what he had been taught, and the court refused to convert him.
The JPost says, ”
… a source in the State Conversion Authority said that at least two leading religious Zionist rabbis ruled that messianic Chabad was beyond the pale of normative Jewish belief.
“They [messianic Chabad Hassidim] attribute to him supernatural powers years after he passed away. That is not Judaism. It’s something else.”
Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar will be asked to decide this weighty theological question and in the process pass judgment on thousands of members of the messianic stream within Chabad Hassidism who believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, is the messiah.
This according to the article; I have heard an (unsubstantiated as of yet) rumour that, in fact, Rabbi Amar has ruled against the conversion applicant, and thus, essentially declared meshichist Lubavitch treif. I am curious as to what effect will this have on ChABAD: Is this a recognition that some beliefs are outside the pale, even if the holder of said beliefs has the outer appearance of Orthodox praxis? What effect will this have on the yeshivot that are still er, offering this perspective, either in Israel or the USA?
By the way, speaking of treif, Rubashkin (who is owned by the ChABAD Lubavitch Rubashkin family just to be on topic), has apparently had its teudat kashrut yanked by KAJ (HT to Failedmessiah)
by feygele · Monday, December 31st, 2007
On a crowded Jerusalem bus, heading towards Ben Yehuda and Kikar Zion tonight, I witnessed a great exchange. The scene: three hareidim, in full black suits, black hats, tallit katan on top of their shirts.
Guy 1: “You guys gonna get crunk tonight?!?”
Guy 2: “We’re gonna get shit-faced!”
Amazing.
by BZ · Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
Here at Jewschool, we’ve been reporting on the machinations regarding the shemitah year in Israel. As you may have heard, the rabbanut went through with the heter mechirah (sale of the land of Israel to non-Jews, permitting the use of its produce) as usual, but in a half-assed way, allowing local rabbinical councils to set their own policies, so that local rabbinates could decide not to accept the heter mechirah and to deny kashrut certification to stores and restaurants that relied on it. The case has been pending before the Supreme Court for almost 2 months. In the meantime, here in Jerusalem, though the Jerusalem Rabbinate has not accepted the heter mechirah, a number of businesses have gotten around this by getting their kashrut certification from the nearby Mateh Yehuda Regional Council.
Today, the Supreme Court invalidated this decision of the Chief Rabbinate. The heter mechirah is once again the law of the land, and “the Chief Rabbinate must override any council rabbi that refuses to grant the sales permit and appoint in his [or her*] place a rabbi that would allow the loophole.”
This may be a much-needed smackdown to the Chief Rabbinate, or (unfortunately) this decision may help save the Chief Rabbinate from itself.
* Just kidding!
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, October 18th, 2007
According to Ha’aretz, another challenge to the Chief Rabbinate has popped up. Last month I blogged on the reaction to the scandalous no-heter for shmitta matter(and here); a group called Tzohar had announced that it would simply go around the Rabbinate. Well, they’re at it again.
45 rabbis from Tzohar and an unspecified smattering of the Religious Kibbutz Movement in response to the chief rabbinate’s policy of making conversion ridiculously difficult have said that they will simply go around it in this as well.
According to Ha’aretz,
That position ignores the plight of the more than 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to halakha. If the recommendations of the interministerial committee on conversion to expedite the process are not implemented soon, the rabbis are expected to establish the proposed conversion courts. That would represent another stage in the undermining of religious-Zionist rabbis of the Rabbinate, following struggles over marriage, kashrut and shmita in the past several months.
The latest steps began about six months ago with a conference of the Joint Conversion Institute, which prepares most prospective converts in civilian and military frameworks. After the head of the institute, Prof. Benjamin Ish-Shalom, announced that the requirements of the religious courts kept many graduates from completing their conversion, 45 rabbis agreed to officiate in religious courts that would convert the graduates, even without recognition from the Rabbinate. Most of the rabbis, the majority of whom who prefer not to be identified, are associated with with Religious Kibbutz Movement and the Tzohar rabbis’ organization.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how this plays out int he marriage arena, since the Chief Rabbinate is almost certain to refuse to allow these converts to be married in Israel - causing these folks to suffer fromthe same problems that Reform and Conservative/Masorti converts have had to deal with for years.
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